Web feed content, comprising web feed articles or simply “articles” are a means to syndicate contents via the internet Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a web site. To provide a web feed, a site owner publishes a list (or “feed”) of recent articles in a standardized, machine-readable syndication format, such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) or Atom. The feed can then be downloaded either by aggregator web sites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader client applications. Aggregators and feed readers allow users to subscribe to feeds and then check the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading updates and providing a view of their content. A user, however, generally must sift through articles or article summaries to find interesting topics. This can become a particularly onerous task given that it has become common to subscribe to a great number of web feeds. However, web browsers and feed readers generally lack feature-rich interfaces enabling efficient management and navigation of the many articles. Because feature-rich interfaces also come at the expense of a user learning curve, it would be desirable to utilize a feature-rich web feed interface having management and navigation features which a user has already become accustomed to, such as an email client application.
Also, if the user wishes to forward articles to a friend, if using an aggregator or web browser, the user must separately compose an email and include the article or a link to the article. In such a circumstance it would desirable for a user to have the article directly accessible to an email client application.
It is also desirable to have an email client application that can automatically sift through articles and identify topics that the user is particularly interested in. In addition, by providing articles in a form which can be displayed and managed as emails, technologies that are advantageous for email messages such as sorting via Message Rules, adding message To-dos, highlighting segments of a message via Data Detectors, and manually sorting messages by dragging them to other mailboxes may also be advantageously applied to articles. In achieving these goals a great deal of convenience may be provided to the user with out requiring the user to master a new feature-rich application interface.
Furthermore, a method for employing an email application to access web feeds without disclosing to the web feeds a user's email address to a potentially insecure third party aggregator is desirable.